Whether by a hair’s breadth or the skin of one’s teeth, sometimes escapes are just too close for comfort.
We asked you, the Just About EVE community, for stories of your closest calls with Bob. We wanted stories of pilots knocking at heaven’s door only to dash in the opposite direction as St Peter’s hand begins to turn the pearly doorknob. As we’ve come to expect, you didn’t disappoint. For the master collection of true tales from everyone's favourite space opera MMO, check out EVE Online stories.
Life on the edge (of cardiac arrest)
First up, we have a heart-thumping tale from JAKEL33T. Who needs coffee, exercise, or Las Vegas when you can gamble a fortune in a diplomatic shuttle?
The cautionary tale
This only happened a few weeks ago. Sometimes, I just have to get the blood pumping and feel alive, while also being lazy, of course. I needed to move some capital blueprint originals (BPOs) out of Jita 4-4 to place them for some research. It’s in my nature to be chaotic, and so I loaded them into a Council Diplomatic Shuttle and undocked.
I made it into warp and soon landed at the gate where I was immediately targeted, scanned, and red-boxed. Firmly in the firing line, my heart was about to explode, but I managed to take the gate with 2% structure left.
Needless to say, that was enough adrenaline for me for a while. And in case any readers are wondering, I was carrying 80 billion ISK worth of BPOs.
Fly like it’s free!
Fratnip
Next up, EVEIL, who spends their spare time aggravating the 32,000-member strong alliance, Fraternity. Their story shows that if you poke the bear often enough, then it will poke back - with its teeth. Thankfully, EVEIL has instincts that you only gain from a life of being a professional nuisance, and they made a Hel of an exit.
The cautionary tale
Before this incident, I’d spent a few days camping Frat space, and they were getting rather annoyed with my antics. I caught a Devoter in my trap. But unlike most of my victims, it didn’t react in surprise. It immediately targeted me and activated its bubble just as one of its friends appeared in a Lachesis.
I had a feeling it was a planned ambush and began moving my Loki to safety, but I wasn’t fast enough with my Keres. The Lachesis’s warp disruption range bonus allowed them to tackle me as I was burning away.
I managed to damp him off, finally activating warp just as a Hel landed. You know you’re doing something right when they throw a Hel at you.
A rapturous Raptor distraction in Rio
On multiple JA EVE posts, FUN INC has praised their ship of choice, the Raptor, which you can see below in all of its beautiful skins. In this story of heroism and leadership, you can really see why they’ve fallen in love with it. If their adventure sounds like one you’d like to be a part of, head to npsi.rocks to join their fleetups as well as “other totally awesome NPSI groups!”
The cautionary tale
Deep behind enemy lines, I was running my infamous ShrinkWrapped fleet. We were out in the Kalevala Expanse heading from the north-east corner to the home staging system of R10, or Rio as it's commonly known. When entering Rio through the pipe from 74D, a standing fleet has time to rally the troops to intercept any hostile threat. We were that hostile threat.
The beauty of Rio is the number of exit points - you can go to RQ, I2, BG, GQ, and then onward. Effectively, it’s a one-in four-out system. You can give a hostile fleet the slip if you play your hand right by playing gate games or using your aggression timers to your strategic advantage.
The worst thing about running through this area is the gate interface from QG to Rio. The Keepstar is on grid, 1,000 kilometers away, and a response fleet can readily drop down to engage within the blink of an eye. This night was no different. The standing fleet had obviously had a quiet night, and Raptor snacks were on the menu.
As with every roam that I run, these are public fleets. The knowledge of the fleet commander (FC) often gets leaked, and fleet movement can sometimes be disrupted should the FC ever get caught - or headshotted.
In this instance, I was well and truly caught - pinned down by the enemy forces. I handed leadership over to my second-in-command to guide the fleet to safety. But that left me stuck at a gate ping-ponging back-and-forth while waiting on my timers.
Now this is where the big-brain thinking comes in. I was delaying trying to catch up with my friendly fleet through choice, by design if you will. I was allowing them to extract to safety.
Somewhat hilariously, rather than the hostile fleet giving chase to a fleet of 20 or more whom they could have easily caught, engaged, and killed, the opposing force opted to catch a lone straggler, i.e. me. It bought us enough time for our fleet to get three or four systems away into the relative safety of Etherium Reach.
Each time I crashed gate, they aggressed. As a result, they couldn’t take the chase to the larger fleet and were effectively stuck in the system. Every time, I held my cloak until the last second, allowing any damage I’d taken crashing gate to regenerate and buying crucial moments for my fleet to get to safety.
The final time, I managed to spawn on the correct side of the interdiction bubble, power out of the warp disruption bubble, and miniwarp up to a mobile depot on the grid (400k above ping).
The beauty of the mighty Raptor is its speed, and that it has the ability to overheat to 7,000. In this instance, I didn’t even need it. Their light tackle didn’t even manage to catch me. I was only long pointed and jammed (lolz), and I managed to power out of the bubble, break my point, and get safe. I eventually caught up with my fleet and resumed fleet command, leading us all home to safety.
If you want a visual masterclass in avoiding gate camps, you can watch some of this great escape in this Twitch clip. Although it comes with a language warning.
A mine-r mistake
Next is Brother Grimoire, whose story illustrates how one should never take one’s eye off the ball. Especially when that ball is in the middle of a deadly minefield.
The cautionary tale
This actually happened live on-stream. I was in a superior sleeper cache hacking the remote defense grid in the minefield. On a failure, all the mines in the room detonate, dealing massive damage to your ship. I’m not the only one to have lost ships that way in the past. For some reason, whether by misclick or an input not registering, my ship drifted away from the defense grid during the hack. It was an auto-fail. The mines, all over the site, began to detonate.
At that moment, I was certain I had lost my ship, letting slip an “Oh f**k me, bye!” to my audience. Luckily, I’d consumed a Halcyon Y-5 booster from the daily rewards, which left me with astonishingly little hull remaining rather than the usual lossmail. Thank CCP for those neat little boosters!
For those who aren’t afraid to hear the vernacular of a pirate, here’s an expletive-laden streamclip.
Battlegrounds for divorce?
Having your partner game with you is, for many, the ultimate dream. But as Kshal Aideron' story shows, it can occasionally cause some complications - especially when a precious Claymore is at stake. But fear not, both Claymore and marriage survived.
The cautionary tale
My narrowest escape was from my husband.
When EVE Rookies first started two-and-a-half years ago, it was a few good friends, myself, and my husband paving the way. The first few months of fleetups consisted of us heavily boxing the fleet. When we were lucky, we had one or two other brave souls who took a chance on public incursion fleets. Since I was primarily the one FC-ing, I was always in the Claymore and my husband dual-boxed the logistics.
Back then, standard operating procedure was to have the Claymore go in first and tank. This way, any Praxis pilots who weren’t as skilled wouldn’t constantly get beat up on. Everything went fine until ‘the incident’. And then? It didn’t.
Once more, the Sansha were beating on my poor Claymore. I broadcast for shields. No reps. I watched my shield turn into armour. No reps. I watched my armour turn into hull.
As an FC, I’ve never raised my voice. Ever. I’ve had ships get CONCORDed in my incursion fleet. I’ve had newbros get lost in a PvP fleet right before we were going to take up a fight. I have people constantly shooting the pod before I call for it. To this day, the only time anyone has heard me raise my voice on comms was when I shouted down the stairs at my husband to rep the Claymore.
He saved it with three hull left.
Later, he informed me that he got distracted by Discord, and that’s why the Claymore almost became a pretty explosion. And that, folks, was my narrowest escape. Be careful when you say, “I wish my partner played with me.” You might lose a Claymore.
Sadly, we had two great submissions that we couldn’t award prizes to because they were made as ‘replies’ rather than ‘submissions’. But if you haven’t had your narrow escape fix yet, then check out the stories of Celltear and Rushlock on the original bounty post, where you’ll also find the original text from the winning submissions. And Celltear and Rushlock, if you’re reading this, feel free to resubmit your stories if we ever run this bounty again. Judging by the quality of the submissions, we will.
Image Credit: Razorien on Flickr
Created at . Page last updated at .
